Science fiction fans have always had a respect and understanding for the history of the genre.
Unfortunately, science fiction has achieved such an age that each year sees our ranks
diminished. The science-fictional year 2001 could have been much worse for the science fiction
community in sheer numbers. Only a single member of the community was killed in the attacks of
September 11, although several people in the publishing industry were able to watch the World Trade
Centers collapse from their homes and offices. On September 11, science fiction fans found websites
to check in at, revealing all were accounted for in both New York and Washington. Later, it would be
discovered that the vice president of Odyssey Press, which prints and mails the New York Review of
Science Fiction was on American flight 11. While there were a few tragic surprises, the mortality
rate for 2001 was no higher than would normally be expected.

The millennium started with the death of actor Ray Walston (86) from
lupus on January 1. Although most recently known for his role as a cantankerous judge on the television show
Picket Fences, Walston made his science fiction name playing Uncle Martin on the 1960s series
My Favorite Martian, has also portrayed the Devil in Damn Yankees, and appeared in the series Amazing Stories.

George Jumper, Former LASFS President, died of an heart attack on January 8.

Eileen Costelloe (49), a British fan who suffered a brain tumor in
mid-July 2000, finally succumbed on January 21.

Frederic E. Ray, Jr. died on January 23. He was one of the original Superman
illustrators and also worked on Tomahawk for DC.

Rick Shelley (53) suffered an heart attack on January 13 while attending
Chattacon. He underwent emergency bypass surgery, but died on January 27 while awaiting the opportunity for an heart transplant. Shelley
published several stories, novels and series of military science fiction drawing on his experiences in the army.
Shelley broke into the field in 1985. He had just turned in the first two novels of a trilogy with the third scheduled for delivery shortly after Chattacon.

Best known for creating the Dorsai, Gordon Dickson (77) died
on January 31. Other notable work included The Dragon and the George series. Dickson was also involved
with science fiction fandom, attending conventions and taking part in filks. His Dorsai series was originally slated
to be a collection of novels set in the past, present and future, although the future sections were the only ones published,
and then, more extensively than initially planned. Dickson served as President of the SFWA from 1969-1971 and won the Nebula
Award in 1966 for "Call Him Lord." His two Hugo-winning stories were "Lost Dorsai" and "The Cloak and the Staff."

Ernest Sterne (86) died following a long illness on
February 2. Sterne was a British SF collector and fan as well as an historian and ornithologist.

Gerald Suster (49), who was a schoolmate of Douglas Adams,
died of an heart attack on February 4. Suster's fascination with the occult found its way into his horror writings and he
also wrote a biography of Aleister Crowley and other non-fiction works on the occult.

Frank O. Dodge (79) died on February 9. He was the author of
several short stories and one novel, Thor's Fist, which was published by DNA Publications the day after he died.

Richard Laymon (53), President of the Horror Writers of
America and author of more than 25 novels, died of a heart attack on February 14. Most of Laymon's works were firmly in
the horror genre. He did publish a non-fictional autobiographical work entitled A Writer's Tale. He was scheduled to be
one of the guests of honor at the 2000 World Horror Con.

Tina Spell (34), a Writers of the Future winner and author who
wrote under the name T.M. Spell, died on March 2. In addition to beginning a career as a professional writer, Spell edited a number of fanzines.

Jenna Felice (25) died after suffering a severe asthma attack
on March 10. Felice was not only an editor at Tor, but she was also the associate editor of Century,
a science fiction magazine she worked on with her companion, Robert Killheffer. Felice was orphaned at fifteen and raised her ten-year old sister.

Sheila Bostick, a West Coast fan who served as treasurer for
Tiptree Award and was an early user of computer bulletin boards and newsgroups died on March 11.

J. Harvey Haggard (89) was an author who published several
short stories in the 1930s and a few as late as 1951. He died on March 15. In 1991, he was inducted into the First Fandom Hall of Fame.

Norma Macmillan (79), who provided the original voice for
Casper the Friendly Ghost, as well as Goo and other characters on The Gumby Show died of an heart attack on March 16.

Donald Reed (65) March 18, In 1962, Reed founded the Count
Dracula Society, which presented the Ann Radcliffe Awards. A decade later, he expanded the interest with the foundation of the Academy
of SF, Fantasy & Horror Films, which presented the Saturn Awards for science fiction films. At the Millennium Philcon he
posthumously received the Big Heart Award.

Mentor Huebner (83)
worked in a wide variety of roles in Hollywood, from the industry's only conceptual storyboard artist to production
designer and art director died on March 19. He worked as and animator on the "heigh-ho" sequence
from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Huebner also worked as an illustrator for the de Laurentis
production of Dune, Bladerunner, and the 1960 version of The Time Machine. Huebner
was also involved with Ralph Bakshi's Lord of the Rings, The Forbidden Planet and other science fiction films.

Ronald Chetwynd-Hayes (82) died from bronchial
pneumonia on March 20. He began publishing genre work in 1959 with The Man From the Bomb and became
known for his ghost stories, which earned him a Stoker Lifetime Achievement Award and the British Fantasy
Society Special Award. He edited more than twenty anthologies.

William Hanna (90), the creator of Yogi Bear,
Fred Flintstone, Tom and Jerry and other characters in the Hanna-Barbera stable died on March 22. Hanna provided all
the yelps issued by Tom in the Tom & Jerry cartoons.

Sir Harry Secombe (79), one of the members of the
influential The Goon Show, died of prostate cancer on April 11.

Pat Ellington,
died on April 12 from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, although she also suffered from lung cancer. She
was married to Dick Ellington, who edited the fanzine FIJAGH. They met in New York as fans in the 1950s. After
they moved to California, she was a contributor to Femizine, a fanzine put out by the hoax fan Joan W. Carr.

Pierre Versins (78) was the nom de plume of Jacques
Chamson, who died on April 18. Best known for Encyclopedie de Utopie et de la sf, which won a Special Award Winner
at 1973 Worldcon, Versins edited the fanzine Ailleurs, published three novels and won the
Pilgrim Award in 1991. He was a survivor of the concentration camp at Auschwitz.

Dr. Rosemary Hickey died on April 26. In 1963,
Hickey helped found the Chicago SF League, an offshoot of the 1950's University of Chicago SF Club. Hickey was a
member of FAPA and, in her mundane life, was a podiatrist who left fandom and Chicago some time ago.
She was in her 80s.

Morton Klass (73). The younger brother of
Philip Klass (William Tenn) and a science fiction author in his own right, died of an heart attack on
April 28. In addition to publishing several short stories in the 50s and 60s, Klass was an Anthropologist at
Barnard College until his retirement in 1997.

Ken Hughes (79), who directed
Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang as well as the James Bond spoof Casino Royale died on April 28 suffering from Alzheimer's disease.

Perhaps the biggest surprise of the year was the death, by heart attack, of
Douglas Adams (49) as he was working out on
May 11. Unbeknownst to the author of the Hitchhiker's Guide radio, book and television series, later that
day IAU announced that asteroid 18610 would be named "Arthurdent" after the every-man character in his most popular work.

Maurice J. Noble (91) passed away on May 18. He was
an animator and layout artist for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Bambi, and How the Grinch Stole
Christmas. He later worked on numerous Warner Brothers cartoons including such science
fictional fare as Duck Dodgers in the 24½ Century.

Jenny Kentwell died in her sleep on May 20. She
was a founding member of Australia's Dusk Star Trek Club and Astrex.

On June 1, Hank Ketchum (81) who created
Dennis the Menace based on the antics of his own four-year-old son, died after a lengthy history of heart disease and cancer.

Alan Dodd was a reclusive British fan who
only appeared in public on a couple of times. He died on June 5. Ron Bennett once perpetrated a hoax in which he
claimed that Alan Dodd was a hoax fan he had created. Most of Dodd's fanac was in writing for fanzines.

Gharlane of Eddore (David Potter, 54), died of an
heart attack on the evening of June 10. He was a prolific poster on a variety of usenet groups. He received
permission from E.E. "Doc" Smith, himself, to use the name "Gharlane of Eddore." Gharlane of Eddore's postings could
be found in numerous usenet groups and were frequently opinionated, controversial, and humorous.

George Evans (81) died of an heart attack after
declining further treatment for leukemia on June 22.
Evans was a comic illustrator for EC, Atlas and Marvel, although he tended to avoid superhero work, with the
exception of working on a brief run of Sub-Mariner material in the 1970s.

Tove Jansson (86) died on June 27. She was
the author and illustrator of the long-running Moomintroll series of juvenile novels. Her writing
has earned her numerous awards, including the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 1966.

Delia Derbyshire (64) died of kidney failure on July 3.
Derbyshire was an electronic musician who arranged the score for Dr. Who and created the sound made by the TARDIS.

Actor Jack Gwillim (91), who played King
Aeetes in Jason and the Argonauts and Poseidon in The Clash of the Titans died on July 2. Gwillim
also appeared as Sir Giles Dalrymple in Curse of the Mummy's Tomb and Van Helsing in The Monster Squad.

Jack Harness (67) died on Friday July 13. Known as
the "Scribe" in LASFS, Harness was a permanent resident of the Fan Hilton in the early 1960s. In May, 1965, he was
impeached and removed from his office as LASFS Secretary for malfeasance. Following his impeachment, Harness was reelected by a large majority.

Frederick A. Raborg, Jr. (67) was an actor and
writer who edited the magazines Amelia and SPSM&H. He died on August 13. Although
most of his publications were under his own name, he wrote science fiction using the pseudonym Dick Baldwin

Boyd Raeburn (73) died from brain cancer on August 13.
Born in New Zealand, Raeburn was better known as a member of Canadian fandom in the 1950s, editing the
fanzines A Bas and later Le Moindre. Raeburn was a TAFF candidate in 1957. From
1955 through his death, Raeburn was a member of FAPA. Raeburn has been credited with coining the term "sercon."

Raymond Edward Johnson (91), a broadway and
radio actor, died on August 15. Johnson was best known for his role as the original host of radio's
Inner Sanctum from 1941 to 1945. During his stint as the host for Inner Sanctum, Johnson
also portrayed the title character on the radio show Mandrake the Magician.

Fred Hoyle (86), was best known as an astronomer
with unorthodox views who coined the term "The Big Bang" as a derisory term for the theory it described,
died on August 20. In addition to his theories that life on earth was seeded from space and we are about to
enter into a new ice age, Hoyle wrote several science fiction novels, most famously,
The Black Cloud. Many of his later works were in collaboration with his son Geoffrey Hoyle.

Walter Reed (85) died of kidney failure on August 20.
He appeared in several films including Flying Disc Man from Mars, and
its sequel, Missle Monsters, and Superman and the Mole Men.

Kathleen Freeman (82) died of lung cancer on August 23.
Freeman was an actress who appeared in It's About Time, and Gremlins 2. In her later years,
she increasingly provided voices for animation, most recently heard as the old woman at the beginning
of Shrek. She appeared in both the original 1963 Nutty Professor and in the sequel to the Eddie Murphy version.

Make-up artist John Chambers (78) died on August 25.
Chambers is best known as the creator of Spock's ears for the original Star Trek bust also worked
on the original Planet of the Apes film series, Slaughterhouse Five and The Island of Dr. Moreau.

Chuck Cuidera (86) died on August 25. Beginning
at Fox Comics as an artist for The Blue Beetle, he later moved to Quality Comics,
where he helped create Blackhawk, and finally to DC, where he worked on Hawkman
and many of DC's ghost titles. Much of his early work was signed Charles Nicholas.

Mark Keller died on September 1, less
than two weeks after being diagnosed with liver cancer. Keller was a founder of RISFA (Rhode Island) and
wrote fannish musicals. He worked on several conventions, including Worldcons, Boskones and
Readercons. His fannish writings appeared in Appaloosa and APA:NESFA.

Patricia Anne Spencer (62) died on
September 5. A popular British fan, she did not let the fact that she was wheel-chair bound slow down her fannish, or other, activities.

Douglas J. Stone (54), vice president of
Odyssey Press which prints and mails The New York Review of Science Fiction was aboard
American Airlines Flight 11 from Boston to Los Angeles on September 11. This is the plane which was forced
into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Stone appears to be the science fiction community's only
direct loss during the terrorist attacks.

Samuel Z. Arkoff (83), Sept 16, Producer of
several science fiction and horror films. He got his start with the 1957 film The Beast with a Million
Eyes. Later films had even more exploitative names and he included Frankenstein, Dracula and Godzilla
films in his repertoire. His titles are (in)famous, notably Blacula and I was a Teenage
Werewolf. Towards the end of his career he did make a few respectable films, most notably
The Amityville Horror and Futureworld.

Robert Abel (64), who created the
special effects for the SF film Tron died following an heart attack on Sept 22.

Meade Frierson III (61) died on
September 24 three days after entering the hospital for cancer treatment. He was one of the founders
of the Southern Fandom Confederation and served as its President from 1970 to 1983. He published the
fanzine HPL as well as Science Fiction on Radio: A Revised Look at 1950-1975.
Frierson was the winner of the 1975 Rebel Award.

Gloria Foster (64), an actress whose
final role was playing Oracle in The Matrix died of diabetes on September 29.

Johnny Craig a comic book illustrator who worked
for EC Comics as well as Atlas (later Marvel) died in mid-September. Craig worked mainly on horror titles,
such as Eerie and Tales from the Crypt, but he also was an inker for several issues of
Iron Man. He would occasionally work under the pseudonym Jay Taycee.

Milton Rothman (81) died of heart-failure
after suffering from diabetes and Parkinson's disease on Oct 6. Rothman was co-founder of PSFS, the organization
which sponsored the Millennium Philcon. Beginning in 1939, he published sf under the pseudonym Lee Gregor.
He also published the fanzines Milt's Mag and Plenum from 1939-1950. Not only
a fan and a published author, Rothman was a nuclear physicist. Rothman chaired Philadelphia worldcons in
both 1947 and 1953, the latter being the first convention to present the Hugo Awards.
He was named Chairman Emeritus of Millennium Philcon.
In 1998, he was inducted into the First Fandom Hall of Fame and was the fan guest of honor at Bucconeer.

Although best note as a poet and translator, Anne Ridler (89)
was also the editor of Best Ghost Stories (1945).
On October 15, she died of cancer. In the last few years of her life, she won the Cholmondeley Award for poetry and
was presented with an OBE for services to literature.

Josh Kirby (72) was the British artist who became
know for creating covers for Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, sharing cover credit for the novel
Eric. He began illustrating genre covers in the 1950s and worked with Donald Wollheim at both Ace and start-up DAW.
Kirby also provided art for film posters for Monty Python's Life of Brian and Return of the Jedi. Kirby died on Oct 26.

Warren Varnom (29) dies suddenly on November 5. Varnom
was a British fan who worked on the Festival of Fantastic Films held annually in Manchester (UK).

Gray Morrow (67) got his start illustrating comics for
Atlas and Warren, as well as a few covers for If and Galaxy in the 1950 and 60s. He was a
contributor to Heavy Metal and eventually became the illustrator
for the Flash Gordon comic strip. Morrow died on November 6.

Terry Hughes, a fanzine editor of Mota
and collector who was a TAFF winner and administrator in 1979 died of complications from brain cancer on November 14.
Shortly before his death, Hughes endowed a science fiction collection at the Windsor (MO) Public Library.
He was working with Jeff Schalles and Geri Sullivan as editor of Science-Fiction Five-Yearly #11 at the time of his death.

George Harrison (58), whose Handmade Films
produced Monty Python's Life of Brian and several other films, died of brain cancer on November 29.
Earlier in the month, he released a song, Horse to Water, which appeared on a British Jools Holland
album. Prior to becoming a filmmaker, Harrison enjoyed a career as a musician, first as a member of a quartet
and later as a solo artist. He coordinated the Concert for Bangladesh, the first of the great charity concerts.

Scott Imes (52) died suddenly on December 11. Imes
was the Manager of Uncle Hugo's, the Minneapolis Science Fiction bookstore. He also videotaped Worldcons over a
span of twenty-five years. At MidAmericon, Imes was the head of the A/V department, instituting the first
closed-circuit Worldcon channel. He later went on to join the Minn-STF Board of Directors.

Keith Allen Daniels (45) a small press publisher
and poet died of colon cancer on December 18. Daniels founded Anamnesis Press in 1990 and has published poems
in Analog, Asimov's, Weird Tales and other genre publications.

Although Nigel Hawthorne (72) restricted his genre
roles to providing voices in the animated versions of Tarzan, The Black Cauldron and Watership Down,
he is probably best known for his portrayal of Sir Humphrey Appleby in the British series Yes, Minister and
as King George III in The Madness of George III. Hawthorne died of an heart attack on December 26.

Lee Burwasser (5?), was a filker and fanfic
author from Maryland who was recently very active in X-Files fanfic. She was a founding member
of Rhosgobel, a branch of the Mythopoeic Society.

As the year ended, Jack Haldeman's family
announced that he had been moved into hospice. Jack clung to life throughout New Year's Eve, but succumbed
to cancer on New Year's Day, 2002. Haldeman published several science fiction novels, mostly in collaboration
with Jack Dann, Harry Harrison, or his brother, Joe Haldeman. In addition he wrote numerous short stories,
many of them science-fictional sports stories. He is survived by his wife, science fiction author Barbara Delaplace.

Compiled from The Chicago Tribune, SFWA, Science Fiction Chronicle, Locus, The Internet Movie Database, Ansible, The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, and other sundry sources.

Steven H Silver in one of SF Site's Contributing Editors as well as one
of the founders and judges for the Sidewise Award for Alternate History.
He is Vice-Chairman of Windycon 28 and Programming Chairman for Chicon
2000. In addition to maintaining several bibliographies and the Harry
Turtledove website, Steven is trying to get his short stories published
and has recently finished his first novel. Steven is a Hugo Nominee for
Best Fan Writer. He lives in Illinois with his wife, daughter and 4000
books.